Today Hindutva and Hindu Nationalism are some of the most attacked terms by Left Liberal sections of media and society in general. The terms get attacked with barrage of opinion pieces in magazines and internet specially when there is a BJP led government in India at centre. We saw this during 6 years of Atal Bihari government in Delhi. Indian media houses hounded the government incessantly for all 6 years on variety of issues by connecting all issues to BJP’s Hindutva roots. The same started again when Modi became prime-minister of India in 2014. However, this time both Indian and International media had a sort of meltdown on their collective nerves. If one goes by the articles which are being written, it looks like “Hindu Nationalism” is the biggest threat to the world today.

Recently while going through such an article written by Nikhil Mandalaparthy I realized that we are seeing emergence of some kind of ‘Hindu-Phobia’. Not just the facts are twisted but they apply the weirdest logics in these opinion pieces. The article in the question is no exception. One could have ignored the article by Nikhil as a faulty analysis by an undergraduate due to lack of mature thinking. However, the facts and logics used in articles are same as most of the ‘Hindu-phobic’ opinion pieces carried recently.

If you read any anti-Hindu article, the recipe is very predictable. Start with base thought that Hindu nationalism is anti-Muslim and anti-Christian. Throw couple of news items on government policies out of context and declare them anti-minority. Mix it with spice of couple of statements from known or unknown leaders from past. The sauce of “oppressed-Muslims-may-take-revenge” always comes handy. And then, since Indian borders join two Muslim majority states, declare that the stability of south-Asia is in danger.

Nikhil’s article starts on same lines. He refers to the government’s initiatives to send illegal immigrants back. As if it’s wrong for any country to protect its borders from illegal immigrants. The article is written appealing to a US government which has a stated agenda to send illegal Mexican immigrants back and put up a wall on the US-Mexico border. Just because the faith of illegal immigrants happened to be Muslim can you term the government as anti-Muslims? By that logic Trump government is anti-Christians, as majority follow Christian faith in Mexico!

Further he uses an out of context statement of Yogi Adityanath to prove that Hindu nationalists want a Hindu Nation (Hindu Rashtra). In the statement Yogi Adityanath speaks about Supreme Court’s comment that Hinduism is more a cultural term than a way of worship. Yogi’s logic is that the concept of a Hindu Nation is not wrong as the word Hindu denotes culture and therefore it is not a threat to any person of any religion. The second statement used for the spice is a statement from Sadhvi Prachi. The statement given in 2016 was wrong and Prachi is known for giving such controversial statements. Her statements are conveniently used by all media and opinion writers to discredit Hindus as a whole and that exactly what Nikhil did in his article. It is amusing how the same people who say that Islamic terrorism does not represent Islam, use statements of few individuals to malign an entire community.

The article flows on predictable lines. After creating a false narrative of anti-minoritism by Hindus, Nikhil says that Muslims will be joining ISIS and Al-Qaeda because they are feeling marginalized. Now this is a line of argument I find very insulting for Muslims. Is Nikhil trying to insinuate that common Muslims are prone to joining extremists if they feel marginalized? Does he believe that common Muslims are so gullible? I have never heard this argument for those Hindus who have been expelled out of their home state of Kashmir. Or Jews who have been expelled out of their country many times in history. Why are Nikhil or other left liberals have so little faith on tolerance level of Muslims is beyond me.

Another amusing observation by Nikhil is that its Hindu Nationalism which is somehow responsible for increased border tension with Pakistan! As per him the Kargil war was also due to Hindu Nationalism. So what Nikhil is trying to say is, because Hindu Nationalists are anti-minority, Pakistan has taken upon itself to save India’s minorities by attacking India. This is seriously laughable logic specially if you take the facts into account that Pakistan has fought three open wars with India when Hindus did not have any voice in India. BJP was non-existent, and RSS had very limited reach.

In the article Nikhil has misrepresented some facts. Like he says RSS chief Bhagwat had backed the terror attacks, based on controversial tape of Aseemanand’s interview by Caravan. What Nikhil does not tell you is that court of law did not accept the tape and acquitted Aseemanand as terror accused. So, if Aseemanand is no more a terror accused, where is the question of Bhagwat supporting terrorism? Then Nikhil writes that RSS was banned by previous governments. This is written in a fashion as if RSS was banned until 2014 by all governments. The fact is that RSS was banned thrice. Twice it was banned with false accusations and courts struck down the ban. Once it was banned by Indira Gandhi as RSS opposed emergency imposed by her and fought to bring back the democracy in India.

In the last section of this article Nikhil grandly makes two recommendations to US Government. One, stop the NRIs sending funds to RSS and two, stop the World Hindu Congress from being organized. As we saw US Government does not wear glasses tinted with left ideology and the Hindu Congress is being organized on grand scale. The recommendations show how rattled are left liberals with increasing space the Hindu voices are gaining on world stage. Their phobia for all things Hindu is very apparent. Question is why are they so scared of giving space to Hindus? Hindu’s don’t have any international terror network. They do not blow themselves shouting “Krishna is great”. So, what exactly is the ‘Hindu-Phobia’ is for?

The answer to this phenomenon is complex and layered. In next part of this series on ‘Hindu-phobia’ we will try to understand the reasons for this phobia, gripping many groups and sections across the world.